Theodore Roscoe - Only in New England: The Story of a Gaslight Crime

TO

LUKE AND BENGTA

AND HAP

AND DICK

AND RUSTY AND RUTH

WHO KNOW THE POINT

AND OF COURSE

TO

ROSAMOND

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

AUTHOR'S NOTE

It is not often that a true-crime historian enjoys the opportunity of living in the very house where the victim was killed; of dining at the table where the victim, all unaware, ate a last meal; of walking in the garden where Nemesis walked; of using the inner door that led to the rendezvous with sudden death.

Not only did I reside for several seasons in such a house, I saw its original furnishings, handled its original implements, read its period books, experienced its Victorian atmosphereall left virtually intact when the door closed in the wake of that dark death many years ago. At which time the inheritors, for reasons manifest in the case history, sealed the house and left it to time and taxes.

Sealed within the house were such skeletons in closets and secrets under rugs as would delight the heart of the most case-hardened mystery fan. Indeed, the house contained a built-in puzzle which might have been devised (and certainly would have fascinated) such past masters of the who-dun-it as Mary Roberts Rinehart or Anna Katharine Green. The closure of the domicile drew a curtain over one of the strangest unsolved murder cases in New England history.

Like the famous Borden Case, this one involved the unusual charge of matricide. And, as in the Lizzie enigma, this one ended with a sinister question-mark posed over the head of the accused.

Lizzie Borden presumably took an axea weapon quite as conventional as she was. The enigmatic figure in the present case, a former State Senator, was accused of slaying his mother with a weapon unique in the annals of modern crime. In reference, a device historically associated with David and Goliath. You put a weight in a sack and either hurled it or whirled it. A "slung shot." (Could this wicked item be the source of the expression "getting sacked"? Etymologists please advise.)

But the Senator's mother may have died by a weirder device than that. I found this out while nosing around the spot generally designated as "X". And the old dark house divulged other previously undisclosed angles to the case. Added up with the benefit of hindsight and happenstance demonstration, they compose what seems to be a plausible solution for a murder mystery almost fifty years on the shelf.

However, some of the official records which dealt with the case seem to be no longer extant. One of the oddest anglesnamely, why the case was summarily shelvedremains a mystery. Because of these missing jigsaws, the writer could not pretend to offer a definitive case history or even a study containing facts of sociological or criminological significance. I prefer to present my story as fiction based on fact rather than as alleged fact based on fiction.

All names of those involved in the actual case have been changed. Not so much by way of protecting the innocent as by acknowledgment that all of the facts were never brought to light, and, at this late date, never will be.

To prevent embarrassment of the present owners, I have screened the location of the house, and have altered its exterior architecture and some of its appointmentsin no way disturbing the basic arrangements which entered the modus operandi of the death trap. But "Quahog Point" is in the State of Erewhon.

Similarly it was necessary to alter trial procedure and some of the testimony in order to preserve background anonymity. But the general substance is factually presented. Footnotes indicate verbatim quotes.

The characters of my story represent types rather than the actual persons involved. Ed Brewster is a combination of several characters who might be found in the geographic region. Any further similarity to persons living or dead is unintentional or coincidental.

The news excerpts are similar in content and tone to the newspaper accounts of the actual case. The letters presumably

quoted are similar to those found on locale. The Police Gazette material came from issues cited. The actual house contained an old store ledger, and the "cheese entries" are factual. On locale was a grand piano swathed in cobwebs. The actual defendant did keep a jailhouse scrapbook like the one described and in the manner described.

The legends in my story are so much story-telling. They are, however, closely similar to the tall tales told in the actual area. There was a mysterious recluse. There was a henna-haired charmer. There was a normally inanimate object that went leaping about in seeming defiance of the laws of gravity. There was a "customer" brought to the undertaker's in a wheelbarrow. The "stubborn Cornelia" story emanated from the locality's champion yarn-spinner.

There was a household like Abby Bridewell's, complete with contentious sons, "bound out" orphan, doltish hired man, and nameless infant reported by an item of concealed correspondence. The victim in the actual case went to her mysterious death in the manner described herein. Relatives and neighbors made statements and depositions much like those in my story (I have researched many of the period, and their styling is fairly standard). In the actual case the elder son faced trial proceedings much like those herein related. The actual judge pronounced on the real case exactly as quoted in my text. And the fantastic denouement of my story follows the actual.

For the rest, this book is fiction. I trust it conveys the spirit, if not the letter, of the real-life drama. If my characters are fictionalized, so were those who played the leading roles on the stage of reality. And when it comes to public images, aren't we all?

T.R.

"Quahog Point" April 1959

ONLY IN NEW ENGLAND

CHAPTER 1

As someone once said, heredity deals the cards and environment plays the hand. Even today at Quahog Point there is in evidence enough heredity to demonstrate Mendel's formula to a black-eyed pea. The families that settled there in 1691 are still there. Those original settlers were of basic English and Welsh stock, and the modern derivatives hark back to the source.

The originals came by way of a sailing vessel which ran aground in a booming nor'easter. The survivors crawled ashore and huddled in a cave. Eventually they salvaged enough timber from the wreck to build a communal hut. They lived throughout that pioneer winter on waterfowl and provisions from the ship. In the spring another wreck provided them with a windfall of live beef. The "Pointers" settled down.

Sustenance from the two wrecks seems to have given these chance settlers an idea. According to legend, they became industrious ship-wreckers, and for a number of decades existed on the cargoes of vessels lured ashore by means of false lights and deceptive smoke-signals. Proof of this evil practice cannot be found in colonial records. You hear such stories of the settlers at Nag's Head, of the pioneers on Martha's Vineyard, of the early inhabitants of Block Island. The Quahog Pointers may or may not have lured ships in to the rocks where shattered hulls could be looted and drowned seamen robbed.

The names of those original settlers were honest enough. Grimes. Babcock. Purdy. Jones. Robinson. Bridewell. Meek. Ord. They never went away. You can see succeeding generations of them on the headstones of the local cemetery. Crop after crop.

Of course there are a few new names. Thorns and Bryces in 1775. Smeizers, Goodbodys, Hatfields and Ross crop up in the